Turning an Idea into a Game
I wrote about the Fate Accelerated system this week and how I think it’s a perfect tool to grab a crazy idea and turn it into a fully fleshed role-playing campaign. I thought it might be fun to work through an example step-by-step, taking comments and questions, and showing how easy it can be.
So here is my plan: I’ll list a few ideas of setting pitches based on books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen and games I’ve played recently, and ask you to vote. If you have a better idea, please add it; if we need to we can always have a run-off poll to settle ties. I’ll start by giving the pitches, then you can vote below.
- Pacific Rim — Giant kaiju versus mech armour action. Join the Pan-Pacific Defence Corps! Based on Guillermo del Toro’s movie, of course.
- Breakfast of the Gods — A hard-boiled tale of sugary betrayal, featuring cereal cartoon mascots. Dark humour and bitter-sweet drama. Based on the free Webcomic by Brendan Douglas Jones, which is also available as a very nice print book.
- The Budayeen — Hard-boiled stories again, this time in an enclave of sin and vice in the Middle Eastern cyberpunk setting of George Alec Effinger’s “Marîd Audran” series. Think Sin City + Casablanca + Neuromancer.
- Exodus II — A hard scifi tale of Humanity’s first interstellar colonization effort against a backdrop of mass destruction. Will it be our last gasp before final extinction, or the salvation of our home planet? Based on the concept from a freeform game I played in several years ago, but easily reusable.
These are just ideas, feel free to comment.
The Reef 